Over and Over, Again and Again
by Cassiopeia'sFreckles
Summary: Every time we go back to the beginning we find ourselves at the start again and everything happens, all over again, exactly the same and yet completely differently. No matter how many times we repeat, I will always love loving you. Link X Male Sheik
1. Chapter 1

Quickly, before we begin I'd like to say a massive thank you to the spectacular people who have read and/or reviewed my other stories you guys are THE BEST capitals and everything!

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I am falling, again, I've fallen like this so many times already. I've done it so often that you'd think I would remember not to before it's too late. I never do. None of us ever do. I wonder if they think the same things I do each time we go through this and get the chance to remember just how many times we've been through this. Currently, it seems patently obvious that going back means we'll just have to live through it all again. Going back after we've won doesn't magically make it so Ganondorf doesn't exist, it just puts us back to time where he does. Going back makes much more sense the times we've had to because everything has gone arse over tit. I've been responsible for more of these major cock-ups than I really care to admit to. But, by the time we all hit the proverbial ground again each and everyone of us will have forgotten, and the loop just starts over, exactly the same, just like always.

Although, it won't be exactly the same, it never really is, it'll certainly be similar, but every cycle always find some way to be achingly different from the last. I think, or at least I like to think, it's because each time it's us that's different. Each iteration of us, of the Princess and the Hero, of the Sages and the silent Sheikah guide and even of the Villian, is different, because you don't do this as often as we have without changing at least a little each time. We don't know it, don't remember well enough to see it, but we grow, we learn.

I like remembering the differences, unsurprisingly, they're the bits that stand out. I'm not talking about the different ways things went wrong, I don't see the point in agonising over who messed up or died or whatever, it's done, it's gone, we seem to have an endless supply of second chances so why play the blame game.

You'd think that, given the kind of lives we lead, that one of the constants during our repeats would be the matter of our hearts. Even now I'm sort of surprised that there isn't some kind of star-crossed lovers deal going on, but, there just isn't. Sometimes I love Zelda, sometimes I love Malon, sometimes I don't love anyone at all and sometimes I love you. I love loving you the most. There's a sense of guilt that accompanies the fall after one of the times I love either of the girls, not because I loved them and not you, but because I realise that I'll never love them quite as well as I love you Sheik.

I didn't love you the first time around, that one played out like a fucking fairy tale. I was all 'I will save you oh beautiful princess' and Zelda was kind enough to swoon in all the right places, she's good to people like that. It seems kind of dumb looking back at it but I wouldn't change it. Actually, it took me a few play throughs to fall for you. It took me ages a wrap my head around the fact that my body wanted yours, even though we were both boys. By the time I'd gotten my head straight, well maybe straight isn't the best word, anyway, by the time I had figured it out I was too late, we'd hit the end game. I couldn't do it, I couldn't beat Ganon, we had to hard reset that time, I never got the chance to tell you.

The next time was a few loops later and falling for you just felt so fucking right. You must have thought I was an idiot that time round. The first time we met my stomach dropped and my heart sped up and my brain went all foggy and I stumbled over my words because all I could think was that you were so unbearably beautiful. You looked at me like I was a moron. Over time I think I managed to upgrade myself from thick as shit to love struck moron. I'm pretty sure I was trying to win you over with the sheer force of my enthusiasm, and I like to think it worked at least a little.

We kissed, just the once, but it happened. You said that you wanted to give me something for luck before I went into the last temple, which was cheesy as hell but I'm not going to complain. You were all shy about it and the kiss you pressed onto my cheek was so brief I'd have missed it if I'd sneezed. I didn't miss it though, and I was a bit more gung-ho about displaying my affection. On reflection, going for some tongue action might have been a bit ambitious on my part. It shocked you badly enough that you bit me and that was end of our foray into passion. You apologised and I said it was my fault really.

To be honest, it didn't matter that it didn't go well, what mattered was that it had happened. I waltzed through the temple after that. There was no way in hell that I was going to let anything stop me when there was a chance of kissing you again after I'd finished. As it turns out there wasn't. I met you again in the Temple of Time and you and Zelda did that magical thing you two do. The big reveal that you're her and she's you that sometimes I believe and, sometimes I see right through. How could you ever be anyone but you?

After that I went on and fought Ganon, and this play thorough was a success if all you cared about was doing the ugly bastard in. It wasn't a success if you were hoping for us to have more time together like I was. I wanted more time to know you, to kiss you, to feel your body against mine. Oh fuck I ache for you so badly sometimes. I'm all want and need and desire that I don't understand.

I lost my virginity to you. Well, technically I've lost my virginity a whole bunch of times to a variety of people, but the first time, the very first time, was with you. A handful of play throughs after our badly executed attempt at a first kiss, you came to my camp one night, and held me and kissed me with a fire I didn't know a living being was capable of. You'd always been a passing fancy until that moment, something to be dreamed of but probably never had. I figured you'd be my perfect little fantasy admired from afar.

The reality was so much more than that. You were safety and warmth and salvation with your arms wrapped around me and the moment you asked to kiss me I knew the answer could only ever be yes. I offered no resistance when you laid claim to my mouth with yours. I tilted my head to present you with more skin to mark when you traced your kisses across my jaw and down my throat. I whined in protest when my questing fingers were met with clothes and not bare skin. I learnt that night that every inch of you is perfect.

I mapped your scars like constellations, I kissed each and every one of them. You played dot to dot with the dusting of freckles across my shoulders. I let my fingers follow the contours of your muscles while you left your own marks on my chest and the insides of my thighs. You took your time doing it to, making sure I was breathless and writhing and so very, very hard before you used your tongue and your fingers to make me melt. The idea of any part of you inside of me felt like more than I could bear. I was already well on the way to being unravelled by the time you entered me properly, but that was what undid me entirely. Your name rolled from my tongue and passed my lips over and over again. It was hearing you say mine, whispered, reverent, so full of love that made me come. Convulsing and stuttering I gasped and tightened around you as I came and you followed suit soon after.

We woke up twined together as if we were made to fit like pieces of a puzzle. You had my heart from then until the moment it stopped beating, underground and in the dark. As last moments go they were some of the best, I hallucinated that you were there with me, leading me into whatever there is after life. I held your hand and followed you into the dark.

I'm ashamed of how long it took for me to find myself lying next to you again. And even when I did it was hardly under the best circumstances. You see, just as I don't always love you, I don't always like you either, and you hate me too. We spit and swear and scratch at each other. We trade blows just as often as insults. I hate you because you treat me like I'm a moron. You hate me because you think I am a moron. I hate you because you talk in riddles when you could just help. You hate me because I get to be the Hero even though you work just as hard as I do. I hate you because you're so Goddess damned pretty. You hate me because I'm the one Zelda loves.

I think mostly, you hate me because this is all my fault. I took the stones to the Temple of Time, I let him in. I hate myself for that too. I remember the first time we learnt that rage and passion are two halves of one whole. We were arguing, it seems like that was all we ever did during that cycle, you were supposed to be teaching my the bolero of fire but I wasn't in a fit state to enter the temple. You dragged me out of the volcano, took me somewhere safe and then bitched me out for getting hurt. Not in the way a concerned, worried friend would, but more like I was a fucking idiot for letting it happen.

We yelled at each other, all while your careful fingers bandaged me up, I can't help but think we were both idiots for not putting two and two together. I said fuck you and you stared straight at me and said go on and I, well, I just couldn't keep my hands off you. We bit each other just as much as we kissed. When I pulled your hair, you pressed your fingers into my wounds. I pretty sure I literally tore your clothes off but you didn't seem to mind, you were too busy getting me out of mine. I swear to the Goddesses, the sight of you, out of that sinfully tight suit of yours, lying in front of me with your legs spread is something I dearly wish I didn't have to forget.

I worked you open with split slick fingers, you mewled every time I added another. The noises you made when I put my cock in you were the stuff of wet dreams. After that it was over too quickly. You only stayed long enough to teach me the song once we were done, and then you didn't look at me the next time we met. We went right back to arguing, as if what had happened hadn't. I think that, after the heat of the moment had dissipated, maybe you regretted what we did, while I clung to it, carrying the memory with me like it was something precious. It was something precious.

Even though we pretended that we hadn't had sex you never started looking at me again. Not once did your eyes meet mine after that, I hated you all the more for it. I hated that you didn't see the way I looked at you. I hated that even though I didn't like you, I couldn't help but love you and I hated how how much it hurt. I was glad when we reached the end of that cycle to leave the awkwardness and bitterness behind and to forget all the ways you'd hurt me and that I had probably hurt you too. Except, after that, for while all I seemed to do was hurt you. Not that I was the only one causing pain. There were times you were so cold to me, so scathing and unpleasant, all I wanted was to be friends, that was it, nothing more. I tried to prove myself to you once, to show you I wasn't worthy of such distain. It didn't end well. We reset soon after. I don't like to look at those memories, I don't like to think that, maybe, it was your fault. After that I was the one that did something awful.

Your eyes were so full of hope when we met for the first time again. Most of the time you treat me to the full force of your air of mystery when we first meet. Occasionally you look sceptical, worried, afraid that I won't be able to do the things I need to, or maybe just bored, I can't quite tell. And then there are the rare occasions where you look at me like I am The Chosen One, Hero of Time, capital letters and all. You looked at me like that this time. I think I looked like I wanted to eat you.

I'm not proud of what I did to you, of how I used you. I wanted you, I wanted to have you and for you to belong to me, but I never intended on loving you. I was a shameless flirt, all lingering looks, 'accidental' touches, innocent words laced with filthy intent and all the subtlety of a shovel to the face. It worked though, I made you blush and stutter. I made you gasp when I whispered things I your ear. I did everything I could to make your heart race and we'd both be lying if we said I didn't succeed. The only thing is, I did that with everyone. In fact, I saved my sweetest words for someone else, but I got you to fall the hardest.

I'm so sorry, I'm so fucking sorry. I made you fall for me because I wanted to and because I could. 'Cause it seems that there's no rule that says the Good Guy has to be, well, a _good_ guy. I was an utter bastard, and it's not the only time either. I mean, I saved the world and stuff, I did a damn good job of looking like the Hero, but I don't think you could actually call me that when I did the things I did to your heart and didn't feel an ounce of guilt about it.

I kissed you, I told you that you were beautiful and I took you to bed with me because I know you'd never say no. I knew because I'd made you want me. I ran my fingers through your hair while you shook underneath me. I told you every would be alright, that I'd take care of you and there was no need to be scared. I kissed you again to distract you while I peeled you out of your leathers. You couldn't look me in the eye once I'd gotten you naked so I distracted you again with more kisses, these once trailed down your chest and stomach and pelvis until I could take your stiffening dick in my mouth.

I heard you groan around the hand you were trying to stifle yourself with and smirked around you. I bobbed my head and sucked, taking as much of you as I could before pulling back to run my tongue over your head. I kept going until you could barely keep the gasps and moans in before I trailed my fingertips down the crease between your thigh and groin. My fingers stopped briefly to cup and fondle your balls before moving further down tracing the curve of your arse and finding the place I'd use to enter you. I ran my finger around the ring of muscle a few times before my mouth traversed the path my fingers had taken and my lips and tongue joined that gently probing finger.

I made sure you were good and wet and open and undone before I took my tongue and fingers out of you. I didn't waste a great deal of time before I got round to fucking you after that. I swear we moved in sweet synchronicity, your hips moving in tandem with mine. You gave me everything that night, and I took it all, but I'm not sure what I gave you in return. Once I'd gotten you to come, spilling over yourself with a broken moan, I let myself go. You became a frequent fuck after that, always a willing body to spend the night with, or a quiet afternoon, or whenever really. Except it was more than that to you. You did sweet things for me, little gestures and words of affection. You told me you loved me. I lied right back to you.

I held you the night before I fought Ganondorf. You took my face in your hands and made me promise I wouldn't die, that I'd come back to you. Shyly you told me that you'd thought of what we might do after the battle was over and Hyrule was safe. A house somewhere near the water, a lake or the sea you didn't mind, somewhere where we could finally spend some time in peace. We could live off of what we could grow and the animals we could raise, and make money selling what we didn't need or by doing odd jobs. It was so beautifully simple, you were asking for so little, just some land, and some peace and me, but just the idea of it all made you so happy. I am so ashamed of myself.

I did come back to you alive, but we never lived together the way you hoped we would. Instead, I pushed you aside when you came to congratulate me, and confessed my undying and everlasting love to the princess, to Zelda, right in front of you. Because who would choose a simple life with the man who loved them over the chance to be a prince? The answer is anyone in their right mind, anyone who was really in love and that had meant all the things they'd said. But I wasn't that person, I was cruel and self-serving, and I broke your heart, and I will be sorry for that until the day I die. I think it was you that reset us all that time, to make the pain stop and in the hope that next time things would be better.

I had to wait a few cycles for my chance to make things right, to atone for the things I'd done to you. In a lot of ways things were better, I was better, but that doesn't mean everything went well. You wooed me this time, and fuck me, did you sweep me off my feet. It was all in the way you cared, the way you understood me. You fixed me when I was hurt almost beyond repair. You held me when I cried. You laughed with me to chase the darkness away. You damn near killed yourself doing everything you could to help me. This time when we made plans to settle somewhere and just live after we'd done our duty I meant it. I wanted it too, and I wanted it so badly. I wanted you so badly.

I didn't hide how I felt, I wore my love like armour during the day and fed it, with passion, like a fire at night while your skin moved over mine. We gasped and keened into kisses, caught in ecstasy between the solid, unyielding earth beneath us and the ethereal expanse of star wrought sky above. But my world started and ended with you, and nothing felt more right than that. Which is why, it's no surprise that, when I found myself facing the rest of eternity without you, I fell apart.

I've lost you before, and you me, and, I can only speak for myself, coped with a variety of success. It doesn't make it any better though, it doesn't make it not hurt. It doesn't mean that watching you die is something I can bear. Because I can't. How could I when you carry my heart, all my hope, all the best bits of me with you? What am I without you? An empty hero with a broken heart doing his duty so that he may be done. And I did do my duty. I gathered your body from where it was left strewn by whatever came out of that well. I held you and rained salt water on your face. I begged for whatever deity who might hear me to give you back. I cried louder than any storm until I had no voice left to cry with.

Then, I dug your grave, and I washed the blood from your body so that it looked like you might just be sleeping. I buried you and sang your wake and I told you that I still loved you. I said your name over and over again so that world wouldn't forget. I told myself that I would spend one last night beside you, and I so nearly, oh so nearly, followed you. Because if I did then perhaps I would be with you again, or if not, if I wasn't granted that, my elysium, then at least it wouldn't hurt anymore. But I didn't, I had promised you I would end this so that we could have the life we wanted, and even though that wasn't possible anymore, a promise is a promise. I did my duty, as empty as I was, I did do my duty. I kept my promise. Then, and only then, did I go looking for you.

That's the last thing I can remember. Zelda must have taken us back, started the fall again, through time until we're back at the beginning. I can't help praying that this time, this time we'll get what we want. That we will bear our burden as best we can and finally find our peace, together, the way I have no doubt that we were always meant to be.

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This is largely the result of me having fun with wibbly wobbly timey-wimey stuff (with a healthy added dose of angst and dicks) so apologies if the idea isn't as fleshed out or as well written as it could be. I hope you have enjoyed/will enjoy reading it as much as I have writing it.  
Thanks, Freckles


	2. Chapter 2

I don't know how many times we've done this, too many to count, and they all blur and run together as I fall past the memories of them. We are fools, all of us, it's so glaringly obvious, here, now, that going back in time only puts us right back in the middle of the mess we spent so long trying to fix. For a collection of intelligent people we clearly have a talent for being fucking morons. I can't help slapping my palm to my forehead, the noise it makes is, impossibly, simultaneously deafening and utterly absent. I have to admit, doing this isn't always a colossally idiotic idea, sometimes we don't have a choice, it's the only way to fix things. Largely because it's the only way to fix him. I cannot fault his bravery, his dedication to doing the right thing, the good thing, but he's only human, and there are things even he can't handle. I feel a little guilty for dwelling on his failures, the number of incredible things I've seen him do far outweigh the mistakes. He's quite something, our Hero of Time.

I watch memories slide passed, they're like oil on water only prettier. It seems odd that they're all so similar, these hundreds and hundreds of repeats of the same story, but all different enough that I can tell them apart. I think its us, the way we look and carry ourselves, that differentiates them. We look younger in earlier cycles. I wonder if the it's the slowly piling mountain on memories that makes us look older with each passing run through. We might forget about all the other times we've done this each time we reset but with still carry them with us. Who ever said you had to remember something to learn from it and grow because of it?

I know I said everything was pretty much identical but that's kind of a lie. It'd also be really boring. I guess it's like how a persons mood isn't always the same on any given day, or even different points during the same day. People are changeable beasts, it's part of what makes us so interesting. I watch myriad different versions of you and me and everyone else drift passed. Some things I can barely tear my gaze away from and others I can't look at at all.

I'm always drawn to two faces, your's and her's. Oh, be still my poor metronome heart. How it has ticked in perfect time, swaying from you to her and back again. Neither of you have been entirely kind to it. So often the two of you would crash together, colliding like star crossed lovers or whatever. At least, that's how it looked from the outside. In those cases it didn't matter which way my heart had swayed, it got broken regardless of who it yearned for.

I guess it's not surprising, I'm not one of the major players. I don't have a Goddess for a patron. I'm simply a facilitator, a means to an end, an after thought. This all sounds a little more depressing than it really is. I have a duty and a destiny as much as anyone else, I'm just not one of the people that gets to have their name in lights. And it's not all doom and gloom and unrequited bullshit. I get my happiness too sometimes, when the beat of my metronome matches the waltz you dance. Never Zelda though, she never loves me like I love her, or at least, not that I've noticed. So I won't begin to comment on the shape of her heart, not until the day she deigns to show it to me.

I know your heart though, don't I Link? I've seen it and held it and loved it with every atom in my body. I've given you mine in return too and, while you don't always carry it with care, I'm glad that I have. I don't know how long it took, how many run throughs it took, for the our feelings to coincide. Goddess' know I'd loved you from afar countless times before I was first aware of my feelings being requited. To be honest that probably was the first time for you, I'd have noticed if it had happened sooner because you weren't exactly subtle about it. You acted like a love struck teenager, to be fair that's exactly what you were, I tried to be professional. I wish I hadn't reacted quite so badly to you kissing me properly. I wanted it, I wanted you, I just wasn't expecting you to be quite so enthusiastic about it. It's a shame we never got the chance to do it again that time around.

I'll take what I get though. Because kissing you, holding you, loving you for a moment is better than not having you at all. Oh, and I have certainly had you, and you me. You weren't my first of firsts, though I think I may have been yours. Zelda and I may never have loved each other the way you and I have but sometimes, the only way to chase away the darkness that descends in the seven years we wait for you, is to pretend that we do. It works well enough, except for the times when I actually fall for her and land myself in a world of shit. Such is life, heartbreak makes the world go round.

Here, now, drifting through where ever this place is I can recall the first time we had sex. I knew I wanted you, knew that my heart kept beating because you existed. I'd been watching over you, the way I always do, desperately trying to keep my distance. I was supposed to guide you and offer help when you needed it, not jump your bones. Only it got to the point where I just couldn't stay away. The idea of one more night spent nearby but not next to you was torture. It was more than I could bear, so, I went to you. I took your hand. I held you. I asked if I could kiss you and you said yes.

The feeling of you pressed against me, yours lips on mine, the sounds you made set me ablaze. I swear I burned like a star that night, all from the fire you breathed into me. I think I lit one in you too. You held me so tightly, as if I would disappear if you let go for even briefly. Your hands shook as you undressed me and every inch of skin you uncovered seemed sacred to you. You kissed all of my scars, every single one, and I have a lot. The scars I got as a kid falling out of trees and tripping over. The scars I got when I was training to become a proper Sheikah. The scars I got in the seven years I waited for you. You healed the hurt behind each and every one of them. From the tiny one on the pad of my thumb I got when Impa taught me to cook to the massive, ugly, lump of scar tissue on my side that I got when wolfos bit me.

I worshipped you just as ardently. I couldn't stop myself from touching you. I wanted to map your body so that, by sight or touch, I would know all of you. I found out that you have freckles. You have fucking freckles. I thought my heart would burst. As much as you are beautiful and sinfully attractive, you're also fucking adorable.

I won't say I didn't tease you. I won't say I didn't do everything I could to undo you with just my fingers inside you. I won't say I didn't burn the image of you in ecstasy into my memory. I won't say it because I did. Perhaps it's kinda weird to romanticise us fucking this much. Maybe it's not because it's not really just about us fucking. It wasn't, never has been, probably never will be. For me, going to bed with you is never just for the lay. I can't escape that my heart gets so inextricably wrapped up in yours. So then, there, in between your thighs I gave you everything I am and I not sure I got all of me back. I don't think I've ever gotten all of me back, all that happens is that, each time, more and more of me belongs to you. I wouldn't have it any other way.

That's why, with so much of me caught up in you, it destroyed me, going into that underwater hell hole and finding you pale, cold and gone. Never, not once, in all the times I have found myself cradling your corpse has it ever done anything other than wreck me. I couldn't keep myself together, I shattered to the tune of my own despair. The awful, heaving sobs that fell out of me echoed around until the heartbreak was deafening. I managed to get you out of that terrible place. There was no I was going to leave you in that desolate, miserable place. We buried you well, my love, in a beautiful place before we turned time back to what we hoped would be a better beginning.

That was when I learned, for the first time, that I don't even have to like you to offer myself up upon your alter. There are times we hate each, sometimes because we both love Zelda and sometimes because one, or maybe both, of us is just a dick. Not all the versions of us that exist in these endless run throughs are good people. All qualities have dark sides as it were. The wise can seem distant and condescending. The powerful court corruption and madness, and courage, well courage can blur into arrogance. Most of the time you ask for nothing in return. You believe in doing your duty but you don't see yourself as a `Saviour' or a `Hero'. You're so self-effacing and humble it's almost unreal. Other times I'm pretty sure you'd suck your own cock if you could. Only you can't, so I do it for you instead.

I've not always been a particularly good person either. I've been awful to you and her and everyone really. I could blame it on being damaged and, let's face it, I am, we all are in our own ways. The way I had to grow up would mess anyone up. And so, just because I am bitter, and a little screwed up and miserable sometimes I decide I need to make sure everyone else is too.

I can catalogue our hate sex, that sometimes isn't even hate sex. We argue, then we yell and then we end up naked and you're inside me and oh Goddesses is it good. I can remember picking fights with you just because it turned me on. I can remember masking how desperately attracted to you I was by being an arsehole to you. And then taking it way too far and hurting you. I remember meeting you inside the volcano and seeing you were in no fit state to carry on. I realised then, for the first time that time around, how easily I could lose you. It fucking terrified me. I did the only thing I could think to do, I took you somewhere safe and yelled and yelled and yelled at you to try and make myself feel less scared. You gave as good as you got. I didn't mean to admit I wanted you. I didn't mean to say go on then after you'd said fuck you. I'd meant to keep wanting you as my dirty little secret. I wanted to pretend that I didn't wank over you almost every night. Thing is, though, I'm glad I said it.

You kissed and bit hickies onto my neck as you peeled me out of my leathers. I pulled your hair and made sure to grind the hard on I'd gotten the second you'd touched me against you. I couldn't stop myself moaning when you started fingering me. Couldn't help the way I reacted to the curling of your fingers inside me until they are withdrawn and replaced with something that is, impossibly, even more satisfying. And holy fucking shit your cock is incredible. I almost hate how I worship your disgustingly perfect body. Almost, but not quite.

The aftermath was awkward, the way it always is when we refuse to own up to what we've just done. I teach you the song and make sure I never look you in the eye again because how can I after that? After the noises I made and the things I whispered to you about how my body wants your s so badly. Let it not be said that, for all my cursing and coldness, I am not easily embarrassed. I am. I am not smooth, or suave or confident. I am none of the things you are. I am not you. But I crave everything that you are. And Goddesses does the world like to fuck me over for it.

Case in point: you bastard. You colossal shitbag. You scum sucking arsehole. You complete and utter twat. You . . . you . . . no one, no one hurts me like you do. Every time, every single time we reset, every time we fall backwards since it happened I. . . it. . . I . . . just fall apart all over again. I know it was just one you and one me of the many that have been but it was still you, and still me and. . . and how fucking dare you. How dare you do that to me? It's not often I am utterly unguarded around you right from the beginning but I was then. You won my respect before we even met, my affection with a smile and my love with carefully chosen words. I followed you into bed full of love and trust. I writhed and moaned beneath you and above you and around you. The things you did to me, oh Goddesses. The things your fingers and tongue and mouth and cock have done to me. The way you tease me and the way you scold and reward in turn. How you make me want to obey you and please you. Oh and how it feels to have you on your knees with your mouth around my dick. Oh, the way it felt when you threw me aside to tell her you loved her. You bastard, you utter, utter bastard.

You have every right to be just as angry with me though. I am not perfect. I am never perfect. Who is? It would be so wrong, so very wrong to say that I haven't hurt you. After all, I was the one that goaded you into doing something that killed you. It was one of the times we didn't get along. Well, actually you tried, you tried so hard to be friends and I just wasn't having any of it. I pushed you, and just kept pushing, to see how far I could take it. To see if I could break you. I suppose that I did. I told you about the thing in the well, explained how it had been sealed away but still posed a threat to everything we were fighting for. I. . . embellished the story for effect. I knew exactly what to say to make you rise to my stupid challenge. You are so good, so brave, so selfless that even the idea that this thing might harm people was enough to get you raring to go. But the suggestion that maybe, if you did this, if you beat this thing, I'd finally believe you really were the hero. That I'd finally stop being a massive shitbag that dicked you around at every available opportunity was the final nail in the coffin. In your coffin.

I like to think I would've been better after that. Believing that makes me feel a little less guilty. Less guilty in the same way that bailing a thimble full of water out of the ocean might make a man feel a little less drowned. I knew I shouldn't have sent you there. I knew it then and here, now, in this place built out of memories it's so fucking obvious that I did something terrible. It was too soon, aberrant and out of the proper order of things and whenever we go off track terrible things happen. I sent you there on a dickish whim. I sent you there to die. I. . .I killed you, I never. . .never meant to but. . . oh fuck, your body, you were so cold. If there are any Goddesses, if there is any good left in this world then hopefully I will get the chance to redeem myself. I'm so sorry.

It seems appropriate really that the reason we're falling back to the beginning this time is because I died in the same place I sent you to die. For me, it was quick but for you, well I've cried over your corpse enough times to know how it hurts. I'm glad we at least had the time to be together this time round. I'm glad I got the chance to whisper to you just how much I loved you. I'm glad I got to hear you say you loved me back. I'm glad we got to make our plans for the life we could have when destiny was done with us. I'm glad we both meant it this time. It doesn't matter how many times in how ever many play throughs we've fallen in love it is always something incredible.

I will always love you. I will always hope. I still believe one day we'll find a way out of these endless replays and run away together. My dream, my desire, for a quite life with you by the water where no one asks anything more of us than the time of day is perhaps the most constant thing I have. I can't help but to believe that you want it to. Do you? If we ever get the chance will you come with me? Because my metronome heart broke ages ago, and now it always lies with you. Always aligns with you. Oh Goddess' be I was made for this, I was made for you and this is all I want and all I ask. It isn't much. Is it? My poor, beautifully, wonderfully, perfectly defective metronome heart would shatter altogether if you told me it was. All that's left now is to hope, as I fall, that when this all starts again and when your eyes meet mine for the first time again, there and then and all at once we will fall together, again.


	3. Chapter 3

I will never tire of watching the way the light moves over the water. It makes standing here, elbows deep in suds and warm water and dirty dishes, much more bearable. I love being here. I love watching the swell of the tide. I am ever grateful that I've had the chance to watch the sea as it changes with the seasons. It's beautiful whether it's flat and wide and clear blue or angry grey-green and flinging itself with all its force against the shore and the cliffs. I love immersing myself in it in the summer and sheltering from it in the winter. I'm slightly less enamoured with the way the salt and the sand always manage to find their way inside and get into everything. But in the end, a little salt and sand is worth putting up with for this.

I will be forever grateful to the Goddesses for many things, and one of them is this cramped, damp, creaky house that is the best place in all the world to be. Every summer, when all the doors and windows are thrown wide open to let the breeze in I tell myself that this is the best that life can get. And then, in winter when everything and everyone is bundled up and the fire is burning away and the outside world seems like something I imagined I tell myself exactly the same thing.

It's not always been easy, apparently I don't possess any green fingers at all, but I know how to keep trying and how to learn from things going wrong. I may not have the best relationship with my garden but the two of us seem to have come to a truce and things grow well enough. I'm much better with the animals, although that might be because I'm willing to concede that the cuccos are the boss of us all.

Getting to know the people here abouts has been more like learning to compromise with the garden than the instant understanding with the animals. Not because of the people themselves but because I had to learn how to interact with them in an ordinary way and not like the world was ending. I had to learn how to just be the newcomer who lives in the house up the hill. They have no idea of what I was before and I love it. They have no idea of how hard it was to get here, of how much I had to give up. That said, I don't regret it. I don't regret packing up everything I had and riding away from it all and coming to this haven, this heaven, with you.

I hear the door open, I hear you walk over to me. I hear you swear quietly at that one dodgy floorboard we've been meaning to fix for ages. I feel you wrap your arms around me and I lean back against your chest. You press a kiss to my neck and I can't help the breathy sigh that you coax out. I feel your lips turn up into a smile at the sound I make. I pull my hands out of the water and twist in your arms to face you. You don't look terribly impressed when I wipe my hands dry on your shirt and huff dramatically before letting go of me. It's hard not to laugh as you play at being upset with me. It doesn't help that you keep almost smiling and totally giving the game away.

You pull your slightly damp shirt up, over your head and I don't even pretend that I'm not staring at every glorious inch of you that I can see. You are so good to me in so many ways and one of them is definitely letting me ogle you. You hold a hand out to me,

`Come with me, you've got better things to do.'

`Like?'

You don't even try and stop the smile this time, I bite my lip to try and contain mine.

`Me.'

The eyebrow wiggle is so utterly unnecessary but I wouldn't have it any other way. I reach out and thread my fingers into yours. It's such a cheesy line and we both know it and I can't stop laughing as you lead me up the stairs to our room.

`I love you.'

`I love you too.'

I don't regret it. I will never regret it. I am so glad that I am here with you.

* * *

Thanks once again for reading my fic, you are wonderful and anyone who says otherwise is lying! Freckles


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